


It's Destiny

by Hysteric_for_Sterek (Princess_Rachy)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Break Up, College Student Stiles, F/M, Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pre-Slash, Stiles-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 20:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10951812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess_Rachy/pseuds/Hysteric_for_Sterek
Summary: After seeing the Dylan-less trailer for 6B and hearing the rumor of Colton Haynes coming back for 6B but not Tyler Hoechlin, my mind starts up with my now-perfected coping mechanism of inventing happy-fanon reasoning to explain away all the bad thoughts.So this is my take on Stiles at college during 6B.





	It's Destiny

Stiles is too busy kicking ass in college, training up to be an amazing FBI agent one day to get tangled up in the goings-on in Beacon Hills nowadays. He’s left the town in the capable (*cough* positive thinking Stiles *cough*) hands of Scott and Liam, who only call him like, once a week now to use and abuse his superior brain and laptop full of supernatural knowledge. 

Plus, Lydia’s still in Beacon Hills for another few months too before she starts at MIT, and lets be honest, Lydia’s brain has always been the most superior, she’s just never been as much of a sucker as Stiles to spend all her free time voluntarily jumping into the thick of the drama to save Scott all the time like Stiles was. From what Stiles can gather from all the calls and texts from back home, Lydia’s getting much more involved in the pack lately, much as she always claimed she wouldn’t.

They talk every day, Stiles and Lydia. Ever since that rom-com worthy love confession and movie-star kiss before he’d left for college, Stiles constantly has to keep pinching himself that this is his real life now. He may even have researched all the possible supernatural elements that could have potentially taken over Stiles’ brain and meant this was all a supernatural long-con of his sanity. Because evil curses, magical pixie dust or alternate realities all seem more plausible than Stiles actually leaving his Dad and Scott behind to attend an amazing college in another whole state on a full scholarship, with the goal of one day becoming a legitimate bad-ass FBI agent, while somehow also keeping a long-distance (but totally not imaginary) relationship with _the_ Lydia Martin. These things do not happen to Stiles Stilinski. His life can never be this good.

Which is also probably why he’s constantly battling the niggling feeling inside him that something isn’t quite right. Before he’d left, Scott had asked him how he was going to be able to leave Lydia behind now that he finally _had_ her after all the pining. Stiles had simply responded with “I was willing to wait ten years for my Get-Lydia-Martin plan to work Scott, but I managed to whittle it down to just 4. I think I can manage the long-distance thing for a while.” Scott had given him a look that said he just could not believe Stiles right now, but Stiles hadn’t taken it too seriously because he knew how Scott could be. Just because Scott develops a severe case of tunnel-vision and infatuated obsession as soon as he gets a girlfriend, doesn’t mean Stiles is the same. It didn’t happen with Malia, and it isn’t happening with Lydia. That is fine, it doesn’t mean anything. Right? Of course not. Sure he’d been infatuated with Lydia for years, but he is still able to function as a human being without spending every minute of every day in her presence. He’s pretty sure that’s normal. Unlike Scott who completely ignored everything and everyone else as soon as Allison or Kira were within heartbeat-listening distance, or their names were even mentioned. He’s pretty sure that’s more of a Scott downfall than a Stiles downfall.

Anyway, this is why Stiles didn’t immediately start panicking when he started getting less texts from Lydia throughout the week. She was still sending them regularly enough that Stiles didn’t need to worry that she’d been abducted by goblins or anything, but they just weren’t coming as frequently as they had been when he’d first left. And then yesterday she hadn’t called him at 7. It’s not like they’d specifically made plans to talk at 7, but it had become habit. Lydia always called at 7. Sure, Stiles initiated the majority of their text message conversations, randomly sending her things as they popped into his head throughout the day - when he overheard someone say something funny, when one of his professors said something interesting, when he saw a cute dog - but they both knew his brain was too scattered and easily-distracted to remember to call every evening. Plus, he was often up studying until the wee hours of the morning and had no clue what time it even was. Lydia did NOT appreciate calls at 2am because that’s when Stiles had finally finished his assignment and decided to call her before bed.

So, following this logic, it’s 1am before Stiles looks up from his computer screen and registers the time and the fact that Lydia hadn’t called. He sits there frowning at his computer screen for a few minutes, debating calling her at this hour or waiting until tomorrow and finally decides on going to sleep and waiting until morning. If anything was wrong, he’d have heard about it through one of the others by now. And he doesn’t really want to admit to Lydia that it’s taken him this long to realise she’d never called and to start worrying. I mean, it doesn’t really sound too good, does it?

When Stiles wakes the next morning it’s to way too much sunlight streaming through his window and his eyes blink blearily open to see his roommate sprawled out on his bed on the opposite side of the room. Stiles is confused because his roommate is practically nocturnal. Stiles NEVER sees him in the mornings. Stiles normally leaves for class before the other guy even makes it back to the dorm. And that’s when Stiles realises he’s slept through his alarm and he is late. Very late. So he jumps up, rushes around to get dressed and runs out the door as fast as he can, completely forgetting about checking in with Lydia. Momentarily forgetting about Lydia completely to be honest. 

He remembers again around lunchtime and shoots her a hurried message between classes as he shoves a sandwich down his throat and rushes across campus. All it says is a simple “Do I need to send a search party? Missed hearing from you last night.” and there’s a reply by the time he’s sliding into his seat in his next class. “Search party not necessary.”

The weird thing is that when Lydia calls at 7 that evening, they don’t even address it. Stiles feels too guilty about not even realising she hadn’t called to be the one to bring it up and Lydia just starts into a thought about string theory, which leads to 25 minutes of debating various physics laws before Lydia starts yawning and Stiles says goodnight. 

It’s 5 days later when Stiles is sprawled out on his bed with his phone pressed to his ear, listening to Scott complaining about Liam not listening to him in favour of making googly eyes at Hayden and Stiles is holding in the call of hypocritical foul, when Stiles gets slammed with a harsh slap of reality. Because Scott just said… _what_?

“Wait, hold up. What did you just say?”

“That Liam-”

“No after that, about Jackson.”

“Uh, that Jackson actually sided with me and thought we should start training 3 days a week instead of 1.”

“Jackson’s… back… in Beacon Hills…”

“Um, yeah… You didn’t know that? He flew back about a week ago. Something about selling his parents property or something? Didn’t Lydia tell you?” Stiles doesn’t answer and Scott clears his throat awkwardly before continuing. “Must have slipped her mind. I don’t think he’ll be in town for long. Once the houses sell, he’ll be off back to London…”

“Uh huh. Right.”

“Stiles.”

“No, it’s all good dude. It’s fine. I do have to go though. I have a paper to finish,” he lies.

After Stiles hangs up, he lays there staring at the ceiling for a long time. Lydia had missed calling him again two nights ago and neither of them mentioned it again. And the conversations they _had_ had were mostly about classes and assignments and politics. The text messages had been getting few and far between too. Normally, when uncomfortable and unpleasant thoughts like these started infiltrating his brain, Stiles shut-down, dived headfirst into something else to keep his mind occupied and refused to think about it. But tonight he’s letting himself really hash this out in his head. He’s looking at it like he would a particularly difficult math problem. And it’s another hour before he realizes that that itself is a giant clue. He should be _feeling_ more things about this right? Not intellectually debating it like a brain-puzzle to solve. And all their interactions since he started college had been like this too, hadn’t they? Stiles had always been in love with Lydia Martins brain but there… there was nothing romantic about his relationship with Lydia right now, was there? And there hadn’t been in weeks… months even. Stiles had _forgotten_ to call Lydia. _Lydia_. His _girlfriend Lydia_.

Jesus Christ. He’s completely lost it, hasn’t he? He’s lost his damn mind. Being with Lydia has been his ultimate endgame plan for longer than he can even remember. And he had her for all of a few months before completely screwing it up. And he doesn’t know how to fix it. 

He doesn’t even know if he _wants_ to fix it.

What the _hell_?!

After another hour of consideration, Stiles proves even more that he’s lost his damn mind and calls Jackson. 

“Stilinski?”

“Jackson.” There’s an awkward pause of silence before Stiles starts up again. “Have you changed at all since leaving?”

“Excuse me?”

“All bullshit aside Jackson, I’m not trying to start shit, I’m just- I just want to have an honest conversation with you, OK? All honesty, 5 minutes of your time, then you don’t have to speak to me again.”

Stiles takes Jackson’s silence as an acceptance.

“Do you realize what you did wrong the first time around? Can you admit you were a total asshole and that you’ve changed now?”

“I- Yeah. Yes. I had a lot of… stuff… on my plate. I wasn’t in a good place and moving has helped me sort through things and get… better.”

Stiles figures the fact that Jackson admitted that at all makes the statement believable. 

“Did you… do you…” Stiles clears his throat, annoyed that he’s struggling to say what he wants to say.

“I’ve always loved her Stiles. I miss her every day.”

Stiles nods to himself and blinks back the sudden tears in his eyes.

“OK,” he finally manages. 

Time seems to move quickly after that. Stiles has what he knows is going to go down as one of the hardest conversations of his entire life with Lydia the day after calling Jackson. He tells her he’s always loved her and always will love her, but that he thinks the kind of love changed over time as he grew up and he just hadn’t seen it happen. She sobs into the phone and tells him she’s so sorry for not telling him about Jackson being back in town and that she _wanted_ to be that person for Stiles but that she couldn’t help still being in love with Jackson even though she still didn’t think he deserved it or that they could ever even make it work.

It took a long few hours of crying and laughing and talking and listening, but eventually both Stiles and Lydia were able to reach the agreement of being the best of friends and Stiles knew it would be a true and life-long friendship with every fibre of his being. He’s lucky. _So god-damn lucky_. For so many things in his life.

His new-found clarity on this subject has him spontaneously taking a couple of days off school to fly home for the weekend and see his Dad and his pack and give himself a bit of a wake-up call to make sure he remembers to truly appreciate these people in his life. They have a bonfire on the beach with everyone and Stiles has never felt more like he belonged to a big family. When he’s packing his bags back up on Sunday afternoon and getting ready to leave, his heart is filled with gratitude and happiness and he can’t remember feeling this _healthy_ in a long time.

His Dad drops him off at the airport in the cruiser and Stiles is brimming with positivism as he lounges in an uncomfortable airport chair, waiting to board. He has a crossword magazine open on his lap, and he’s humming along to a random song while he chews on his pen and considers a 7 letter word for “Unavoidable End”. And that’s the moment someone who smells quite nice sinks down in the chair right next to him. Stiles frowns slightly because he’s pretty sure the last time he looked up the airport lounge was relatively empty and there were rows and rows of empty chairs that _weren’t_ right next to Stiles so this dude is being pretty creepy, but he doesn’t look up for fear of engaging the creeper in a creepy conversation. Still, Stiles tries his best to ignore the stranger and keeps his head down, focused on his crossword until the man speaks.

“Destiny,” says a very familiar voice and Stiles is startled, snapping his gaze up immediately, finding himself face-to-face with _Derek_. Stiles’ eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open, his pen falling to his lap. He doesn’t need werewolf hearing to know his heart is beating dub-step right now. Derek just smirks at him and Stiles feels it _in his bones_. It’s like someone just disconnected a signal-jammer in his body and Stiles’ veins are suddenly pulsing with ‘ _I MISSED HIM, I MISSED HIM, I MISSED HIM’._

“The answer to 21 down,” Derek continues. “It’s ‘destiny’.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [Tumblr](https://hysteric-for-sterek.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
